The Lively Ones -- "Surf Rider"
I was just starting to get into surf music at the time that Pulp Fiction came out. I had a Rhino collection of surf classics, a Dick Dale collection, and a great collection of tunes by The Shadows. This track, though, from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, is probably my all-time favorite surf instrumental.
A good surf instrumental has that classic minor-key melancholy*, some honkin' sax, and maybe some organ or electric piano to complete the sound. Of course, the guitar echoes through waves of reverb, an evocation of the pipeline: it's the perfect complement to the experience of a lone surfer at odds with nature and physics, an existential drama.
What distinguishes this track from other surf classics? All I can really say is that it just captures exactly the right mood.
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*Because, as the Anglo-Saxon warriors in Beowulf know, there's always another monster out there to be defeated -- always another wave -- and one of these days the killer is going to get you.
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